The problem is that in other languages "masculine" and "feminine" are random grammatical categories that grammar insists on respecting. Kniga "book" in Russian is "feminine" and stol "table" is masculine even though they are unsexed.

Grammarians in centuries past misnamed these categories because women are usually categorized as "feminine" and men, "masculine". If a noun is feminine the corresponding pronoun must be ona and, if masculine, the pronoun must be on even if the noun is unsexed. Translating these pronouns as "she" and "he" is a mistake.

English doesn't have this kind of "masculine" and "feminine" distinction, so we can argue that he always refers to men and she always refers to women. The problem arises when gender is irrelevant. (It is never irrelevant in other European languages.) For example, "The PU student can be proud of [his?/her?] degree." The general rule is that in these cases agreement resorts to masculine, since student has no gender in English.

English provides a generic pronoun for most of these situations: they.

I have been entertained over the years by my Chinese relations' seemingly random use of he and she. Somewhere in their brains they flip the gender coin, emasculating males and masculinizing females, willy-nilly. "John Wayne, she," "Angelina Jolie, he..."

But the article does not address your specific question about "up," Perry. For that I went to Dictionary.com which records the 34th definition of "up" as "concluded; ended; finished; terminated: The game is up. Your hour is up."

Why "up" and not "down?" Good question! From a spatial, metaphorical standpoint it would seem "down" is more appropriate.

P.S. To Luke, my grandfather, an old salt, used to ask me as a boy, "Why do they call ships 'she'?'' The politically incorrect 1950s answer, "Because it takes a man to handle her." Well, I'll be going now before..."Splat!" Too late!

Last edited by MTC on Fri Aug 23, 2013 3:55 am, edited 1 time in total.